[JURIST] More than 50,000 hate crimes were reported last year in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, according to a report [text, PDF; press release] released Tuesday, the first time such a report has been made public. The Association of Chief Police Officers [association website], a private company consisting of police officers from England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said that it has published the data with the hopes of encouraging other victims to come forward and report crimes. According to the report, police view an apparent increase in these figured from 2008 as a positive sign, indicating that more crimes are being reported and not necessarily that more crimes are being committed. In all, 52,028 crimes were reported in 2009 with the motivation for the offense being prejudice:

• Race: 43,426
• Religion/Faith: 2,083
• Sexual Orientation: 4,805
• Transgender: 312
• Disability: 1,402
• Total: 52,028

The report says that 703 of the faith-based crimes were of antisemitic nature.

Last week, the FBI reported a decrease in US hate crimes [JURIST report] for 2009. The number of reported incidents was down to 6,604 from 7,783 in 2008, while the number of reported victims was down to 8,336 from 9,691. In June, Canadian police reported a 35 percent increase in hate crimes [JURIST report] from 2007 to 2008. Conversely, Russian racial hate crimes decreased slightly in 2009 [JURIST report] because of increased police efforts, according to a report from the SOVA Center [advocacy website] in January.